So here is a little FAQ about FPGAMINING :
(
Disclosure - I own 60 shares bought @ 0.83 (out of 3915 sold so far to investors).
So I prefer it all goes well with this stock - like all of us.
)
Pic of the operation:
Is it a bond or a stock? What is the Contract ?
- It pays dividends based on mined coins each week. So this makes it a stock technically.
No fixed % rate promised in contract on glbse.
It just so happens/happened that the initial dividend per week was ~ 3.5 - 3.7 % of the initial price of around 1 btc/share. Which makes it look like a fixed % mining bond...
Most mining operations are bonds and since the word bond is used unproperly in the Contract ( owner has done a mistake in the wording of the contract... ) -
Here I quote the contract:
"
Full contract:
This bond is a for share in a very large FPGA (high efficiency) mining operation. Bond holders will receive weekly coupon payments of the total BTCs mined by the pool less energy and administrative costs (both minimal due to using ONLY low energy use FPGAs procured in bulk at significant discount). Coupon payments will be made Monday for the previous 7 days of mining activity. The coupons will grow as the FPGA cluster is increased in size. The initial clusters are running and significant size/space improvements will occur concurrently. The issuer can buy back the bond at any time at a price equal to 1.05 times the average price the asset was traded on GLBSE over the previous 1 week.
Issuer reserves the right to upgrade to ASICs in lieu of FPGA clusters as economics warrant.
"
- Do you see a fixed % rate in the Contract? No.
- Do you see the word bond in there ? Yes....
- Is it bound to a specific MHash/s ? No
Keep reading.
How are dividends calculated ?
Quite from an email 5 days ago with more details:
"
From: moparguy email
To: intel's email
Message:
Sorry about my slow response....I work a 9-5 so have limited time for emailing.
Yes I am still mining. If you check out the bitcointalk.org posting you can see pictures of my FPGA mining rigs.
The dividends are calculated based on that week's BTC output of the percent of my mining operation that has been sold via shares. I setup my own operation before doing the GLBSE listing, and as of yet, the bulk of the operation is still fully owned by me and not paying dividends to anyone but me. As I sell shares, more of my operation becomes owned by shareholders, and they will receive dividends based on that portion. The portion of the operation that is paying dividends on GLBSE is approx 80x FPGA Mining brand x6500 dual fpga miners (160 total Xilinx Spartan 6 processors).
I don't want the shares to drop, but some have been selling at very low prices.....
"
2. Why has the dividend dropped a bit recently ?
- 1st a reduction from ~ 3.5% to ~ 2.5% was voted in a motion to allocate funds for an upgrade
- 2nd we have this :
- the dividends paid last 3 times are:
2012-09-03 00:05 77.8433383 3094 0.02515945
2012-09-10 10:15 79.94562932 3548 0.02253259
2012-09-17 12:21 79.1999802 3915 0.02022988
And the difficulty was
http://bitcoin.sipa.be/speed-lin-10k.png
in that period.
So what is the reason for the dividend drop on 09-17 vs 09-10 ? The diff is the same.
Owner said this via email:
"To answer your email on 8/19- I utilize pools that use DGM payout most of the time, so the payout isn't as stable as PPS pools, but with lower fees and eventually higher payouts. So deviation is expected with DGM."
This DGM payout and the difficulty increase should explain the dividends fluctuations and the decrease:
Payment date | Total paid | Shares paid | Payment per share
2012-07-12 22:22 6.13577956 164 0.03741329
2012-07-16 07:16 16.77135975 435 0.03855485
2012-07-23 01:02 61.99999669 1633 0.03796693
2012-07-30 00:01 131.7347848 4040 0.03260762
2012-08-06 01:49 153.7775064 5040 0.03051141
2012-08-13 00:02 42.6327102 1230 0.03466074
2012-08-20 11:04 61.1753128 1645 0.03718864
2012-08-27 11:26 73.27188698 2671 0.02743238
2012-09-03 00:05 77.8433383 3094 0.02515945
2012-09-10 10:15 79.94562932 3548 0.02253259
2012-09-17 12:21 79.1999802 3915 0.02022988
Why is the shares paid going up recently ? Is he dilluting the price on purpose ?
- Most probably not deliberately to drop the price.
- But - the owner has sold some to new investrs obviously . But why is he doing this on a falling price ? Needs answer.
- Why isnt the owner keeping the stock for himself to force people's money to chase the current stock in circulation? - thus the price would stay stable / rise... and we wouldnt have to argue and lose time thinking...
How reputable is moparguy?
Pros:
- He is fully verified with GLBSE:
(green tick on these : )
Phone number: Photo I.D:
Home address:
Email address:
- He answers all emails not later than 2 days (at least intel's emails)
- The tone in the emails is calm and shows he cares.
- Posted photos of the mining operation.
- said he mines at ozcoin - at the time he said that - checked - it is so. Later I checked and his username was no more in the lsit. But he says he does anonymous mining and uses several pools - probably p2pool also.. So its ok he is off ozcoin ... just needed an answer..
- ( this one is a pro and a con ) He said in an email 2 days ago:
"To answer your email on 9/21-I didn't realize scam accusations were flying around. "
- Cons:
- he does not check the forum thread often enough... - does not have the time needed to answer all the investor questions..
What will happen now ?
Possible scenarios:
- No buyback:
- Confidence eventually comes back up - if he keeps paying dividend and we see a stable number of "Shares paid" from now on (means he does not sell more shares in the future... at least for a while... ). Thus the dividend paid to share price ratio will be good enough to attract investors money...
- A buyback/partial-buyback happens at a "fair" price - a price between the current and the historic average of .80
- A buyback/partial-buyback happens as per contract "last_week_avg + 5%"
Owner wrote in last email he is having all the best intentions and is thinking about how to come out of this situation...
His way of thinking currently is that the whole operation takes too much of his time to manage. He has a 9-5 job.
So he is seeking a way to stop the scam-accusation emails and hatred... Still he expressed that he wants this whole thing to turn out as fair to everybody as possible...
PS. Open for criticism and questions - my logic could be flawed somewhere... Tell me if so.
) profit without completely destroying our value, and his reputation. 
- get out!! immediately 